


How People Really Feel

by yourlibrarian



Category: Chuck (TV), Fandom - Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s07e08 Time for a Wedding, Fanfiction, Female Characters, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6805189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I hadn't planned to say anything about "Time for a Wedding" until I ran across <a href="http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/item/etd-Scott-4277.pdf">this dissertation</a> that happened to conclude with "The Trouble With Becky: Fangirl Representation and Repatathologization" which, mind you, was written well before last week's episode.</p><p>By contrast Chuck started off well when it came to female characters, but their centrality in the show started to tell a different story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	How People Really Feel

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted November 16, 2011

It was an interesting contrast to watch last week's Chuck and SPN episodes. I hadn't planned to say anything about "Time for a Wedding" until I ran across [this dissertation](http://digitallibrary.usc.edu/assetserver/controller/item/etd-Scott-4277.pdf) that happened to conclude with "The Trouble With Becky: Fangirl Representation and Repatathologization" which, mind you, was written well before last week's episode.

Scott's dissertation is interesting as a whole though I've only had the chance to read a bit of it so far. But her final chapter mentions Chuck among many examples of how the image of the "fanboy" has often tied him to technology and semi-normalized him by, frequently, making him a romantic hero. This was already pretty obvious from the get-go in Chuck, given that its namesake is a tall, cute, super-smart Stanford almost-grad who's close to his equally talented family. (Stranger still to think of this in connection with the character of Sam Winchester, another supposed geek genius almost-Stanford grad who also has a tall, hot, blonde girlfriend, and whose shows are co-produced by the same company). In short, Chuck is anything but the typical nerd.

One can also say that Becky is anything but the typical fangirl. However, as Scott points out, part of the problem is that the image of the fangirl, when it appears _at all_ , is often normalized in stereotypical ways that downplay or even obscure her fannish self by emphasizing her appearance or family urges. And while Becky avoids being normalized (she seems to have no family or job), she certainly does not avoid being pathologized.

Apparently this [surprises some people](http://symposium.transformativeworks.org/2011/11/dear-supernatural/), but it didn't take psychic abilities to realize that this is where we'd end up from the very first appearance of Sera Siege on screen (and, hey, the series isn't over yet!). There were no female fans in the shop where Sam and Dean first run across the Supernatural series, so even though Sera was supposed to be the series' publisher, she was stuffed into the mold of Becky 1.0. The only significant difference between them is that Sera showed no preference between the two brothers. I think it is no coincidence that Becky has been tied to Sam.

Scott notes that the character of Chuck Shurley is itself a pretty significant statement about the legitimization/liminal dichotomy of fanboys, but unfortunately doesn't go into this anymore than most writers have in discussing the "meta" episodes of the series. She does, though, point out what a burden Becky carries as the sole representation of female fandom. It doesn't matter that Becky is not typical of media fans, Supernatural fans, slash fans, or female fans. There is no one to contrast with her on screen. Of all the female fans possible, the fan that the writers have chosen to focus on is shown to be increasingly pathological in each of her appearances. This seems particularly significant given the minimal number of recurring characters the series has had, and particularly the minimal number of characters who survive multiple appearances. Becky's special, alright, but not in a good way. 

Even though Chuck himself proved remarkably useless in the overall SPN storyline (again, an underexplored subject), Becky is more useless still. The reason for introducing her in 5.01 made no sense, and she plays no significant role in Real Ghostbusters either, since Chuck himself could have been the pretext for Sam and Dean turning up in the episode (assuming anyone feels that episode needed to be written in the first place). And again in this episode, there's no reason to have Becky reappear. When Sam began having the potion wear off, I thought for a moment that the episode was going to turn on the issue of Sam's re-integration breaking down. (Given the nature of Dean's opening monologue, this wouldn't have been surprising). But that was simply one more inexplicable thing about the final scene (besides the fact that both of them went from hating camping to loving it). And why any crossroads demons would want to have their deals come due sooner rather than later was left unexplained. Do they get frequent flier miles every time it happens? It's not like we've been told anything about their reward structure. One wonders why, with all the time they have, SPN spends so little time exploring their own verse.

Speaking of rewards, given everything else that Becky does in the episode that makes her an irredeemable character, it seemed to strike me as particularly odd that it was made explicitly clear in the script that Becky had not had sex with Sam. Given that Becky's interest in Sam was quite clearly sexual, and that she declared herself yet again in this episode as being sexually uninhibited, she does not actually take that step with Sam despite abundant opportunities to do so. (The drive from Vegas to Delaware alone would have taken days for Dean, so she and Sam would have been together at least a week). It seems equally strange, given Sam's belief in his own feelings for her, that he himself did not ensure that sex occurred. 

While only a few fans ever complained about the way that Wes essentially raped Hope by wishing her into loving him in "Wishful Thinking," apparently the writers were not as clueless about the significance of non-consent as it appeared -- at least not when it comes to men. Whatever else might happen to Sam Winchester during a century of torture in hell, rape by fangirl was not a memory he was going to have to repress. 

By contrast, the series Chuck was a much needed breath of fresh air. I've always been disappointed in women's roles in the series but I don't think it was _primarily_ to do with them being women. For the most part, the depiction of women on Chuck has been nicely multifaceted and coming down on the side of the women being independent and empowered. However, time has shown that anyone that didn't fit into the spy side of the series has been squeezed out. In fact, the whole Buy-More side of the show, which was what actually drew me to it, stopped being relevant around S3. I'm not sure why the writers have continued to include it at all, particularly around S4 when they could have easily relocated the show to center on the apartment complex housing Chuck, Morgan, Casey, and Ellie. 

So while I don't think Anna needed to be written out of the show, I suspect that she was sacrificed as a way of keeping Morgan more closely tied to Chuck, particularly as Chuck himself was hardly ever working in the store anymore. Ellie, by contrast, was rarely used in any significant way past the first season, even while the story increasingly focused on their family's past. Rather, she and Devon seemed shoehorned into storylines in any way possible just to give the actors something to do. However, what's been done with Devon just makes it clearer how the expected role of women has factored into making them irrelevant to the overall storyline.

In point of fact, Sarah's importance in the story has never been because she was Chuck's handler, but rather, because she was Chuck's love interest. And it was largely because Anna became Morgan's love interest that she left the show, since she could just as easily have been written as Lester's partner in crime rather than Jeff. And rather than keeping Ellie in the dark, the writers could have decided to keep Morgan and Devon in the dark and make Ellie Chuck's confidante. The fact that the writers chose to enlighten Devon well before Ellie rather flies in the face of the idea that Chuck and Ellie had always been so close. It would have made just as much sense that Ellie was afraid Devon wouldn't understand their upbringing and life, or that he would want Chuck far away from Ellie in order to protect her, and thus the storyline would have kept _him_ in the dark as the newcomer in the family.

The "protection" issue sidelining female characters has seemed particularly obvious in Morgan's romancing of Alex, Casey's daughter. The storyline always seemed to be more significant in the tension it caused between Casey and Morgan than in anything that actually transpired between Morgan and Alex. In fact, Alex remains largely a non-entity, a prop around whom Casey and Morgan can have emotional moments. This was particularly clear in the last episode where a "not himself" Morgan dumps Alex by text and Casey thus gets to be shown as a nurturing father. 

So while the women in the show have generally been depicted as competent, professional, and appealing people, equally likely to be allies as villains, and rarely ever as victims, the shortsightedness in the roles they get to play with other characters has definitely affected their overall significance to the show. That ends up leaving a man, Devon, as the most transgressive character in the series.

To me, Devon is an unusual character. His nickname as Captain Awesome may have seemed equal parts envy and grudging in the beginning, but his very existence was an incredibly obvious carrot to the female audience. I noticed how his skimpy wardrobe seemed to be designed to offset the equally pandering outfits for Sarah, and while that's been less glaringly obvious as time has gone on, Devon really is, well, kind of awesome. This is not simply because Devon seems to have it all -- looks, education, expertise, and, presumably, a decent income. Devon really is an idealized mate in most every situation that he and Ellie have gone through, as well as being a good brother-in-law and friend to others. As Morgan discovered last season, even he wished he could be married to Devon. And yet, rather than being an object of scorn from other men for being such a great romantic partner, he's admired.

This is only partly because, despite all his excessively fortunate qualities, Devon remains quite likable. I was curious to see what they were going to do with him being the stay-at-home dad. While it was not surprising that he'd turn out to be as unusually competent at parenting as he is at everything else, I did find it interesting that the writers made him feel unfulfilled. While it was realistic to make Ellie feel intellectually understimulated as a stay-at-home mom last season (thus the whole subplot with puzzling out her father's computer), I half expected Devon to take to it as easily as he seemed to take to every other challenge in his life. After all, the joke about Devon is that he's pretty perfect. 

That he didn't was rather refreshing. And that's because, aside from being marital wish fulfillment, Devon seems to have embodied a _validation_ of women's wishes. He isn't some mockable fantasy; he's a wistful one. The fact that not even Devon, a guy clearly in need of a lot of mental stimulation and activity in his life, could be satisfied only by parenting seemed to make him more than just an empathetic spouse to his wife. It made him a partner in the crime of daily life, and thus a warm shoutout to any woman who's ever wanted to both be herself and be understood.


End file.
